Why Giving Money to Africa Makes it Poor [video][15 mins] | Hacker News Reader

Why Giving Money to Africa Makes it Poor [video][15 mins]

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10 pointsBender9 comments

We should be developing land, creating jobs, irrigating water sources, installing solar energy panels, and windmills. That is just to start. You can't just throw money at a problem and hope it goes away; you don't feed them fish, you teach them how to fish so they have a job and can support themselves.

Do you think "aid" is meant to actually help these countries??

AID is throwing money at them, without a capitalist infrastructure to keep them earning money and circulating it in an economy so others can earn money as well. Just giving them money doesn't teach them anything but dependence; they need job skills, too.

Do you throw money at startups, or do you have hackathons to teach people how to code and get a job at a startup? Then invest the money in a startup and help it along.

Why can't I keep my own earnings and donate them to people I think are genuinely in need?

Because Israel needs it more.

Aid to Israel is 0.00056 of the federal budget.

It’s therefore unlikely that a rational analysis of government spending led you to conclude that targeting the Jewish state for a snide remark on an unrelated thread is the correct path forward.

Hence why you cannot keep your own earnings and donate it to people you think are genuinely in need.

Any other questions?

How universal is this argument; giving money to politically powerless groups (19th century Irish, homeless people, jobless people during the depression) somehow makes them poorer, seemingly this argument never applies to the already powerful or wealthy.

"Too much money and you lose your initiative, thereby making you poorer in the long run." Said nobody, ever.

> seemingly this argument never applies to the already powerful or wealthy.

Nonsense, giving money to the wealthy and powerful makes them poorer - that's why you should give them some more of your money.

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